End-of-the-Day Connection

Earlier tonight I sat in the large rocker in Sam’s bedroom, the room I used to call “the nursery.” It is now Sam’s big boy room complete with glow-in-the-dark stars and a dresser full of dinosaur puzzles and a shelf displaying his Lego creations. An infant tub filled with discarded newborn clothes sat in the corner. The little yellow leg of the Winnie the Pooh onesy that Eva wore when she came home from the hospital dangled from the top of the pile. Eva still sleeps with me at night, and the crib has been moved next door. It’s piled full of clothes that no longer fit her, clothes that only a newborn could wear, clothes that I can’t quite let go of yet. Just in case.

Before Eva was born Sam and I would snuggle on the rocking chair and talk about our day.  We’d think back to how we had squeezed bright colored play-doh through a press and made a giant grey-brown mass or we’d laugh over the way he’d lifted up his shirt and told me he had a baby growing in there too.  “Your baby is pink,” he’d say, “But mine is green.  It’s not ready to come out yet.”

Tonight as I wedged a pillow in between my hip and the arm of the chair so I could nurse the baby Sam sat up in bed and asked if he could climb in with us.  His big green eyes have recently started dominating his face, and most nights during what used to be a carefully orchestrated bedtime, he crinkles his forehead and looks at me sideways and uses words like “snuggle” and “cuddle.”  Eva is four months old, and Sam has tired of having to share bedtime with her, having to lay in the bed while Mommy rocks Baby.  He used to be the one getting rocked.  Before Eva arrived we would read three books, and then turn off the lights and turn on the lullaby music.  I would wrap my arm around his shoulders and we’d quietly take about what we’d done that day and the list of people we love.

Now bedtime is often rushed or broken into pieces.  I nurse Eva until she’s asleep and then lower her into the swing in the living room and hope she stays that way until Sam and I get through our books and our rocking.  Sam and I are both trying to hold on to our old bedtime routine, our end-of-the-day connection.  Most nights Eva wakes and starts screaming while we’re still reading so we improvise.  Tonight Eva would not go to sleep at all so I had held her on my lap while we sat on Sam’s Lightning McQueen sheets and read about tractors and trucks and Sam’s new favorite, a book of opposites.  Up, down.  In, out.  Happy, sad.  Sam does not like nights like tonight, where he lays in bed and watches me hold his baby sister.

“Can I sit with you?” he said.  And the eyes. “I want to snuggle.”

Sigh.

I held Eva as close to vertical as I could while still nursing, and I pulled my leg over to make room.  Sam squeezed in and pulled a blanket up over us.  I pushed the rocker forward and backward.

“No more spots,” Sam said as he folded his arms over the top of the blanket.  The light in the hallway showed his big smile and reflected off the infant tub filled with newborn clothes.  The Winnie the Pooh onesy was the same one Sam had worn during our early days together three years ago, and even after two babies, it looked barely worn.  They grow so fast.

“Nope,” I said.  “No more spots.”

(This is a piece I recently wrote for thenextfamily.com, and you can read it here.)

Cracking Open

The weather around here is the same weather that drives us all crazy every year. Sunshine and melting snow and mild temperatures that make it okay to leave your coat in the car one day. Freezing drizzle and fog and big fat snowflakes mashing into a mess on the streets the next day. Every morning when I walk into work someone comments in the parking lot. "Not going to be too bad today" or "I thought winter was over" or "I see spring coming" or "Is Summer ever going to come?" The ice has started melting on the river, large areas of open water growing bigger every day, the bald eagles perched on the edge fishing. Sammy has started looking for barges as we cross the bridge into Minnesota every morning, and some days he whines that he can't see anything, that it's too "froggy." March in the upper midwest. Manic depression.

I just told someone the other day that I was beginning to feel myself coming out of the newborn, 24/7-breastfeeding-can't-be-put-down baby fog. I could almost physically feel the world and our lives cracking open in the same way the early ice does, pieces moving and sliding against each other, trying to find the position that will relieve the stress and allow it all to settle into place and melt comfortably.

Muscles!

The kids love Brooklynn

The last few weeks have been a whirlwind, and we've gone back and forth between constant motion and complete standstills, between days in which Mommy needs to get away and days in which the kids need more of me. Mommy the introvert who has never had much of a social life has been out visiting friends, reconnecting with the world, going to readings and meeting friends for lunch and getting back to the gym. Eva is cooing and babbling and figuring out that those are her hands out in front of her and she can use them to put just about anything into her mouth. Sammy has been enjoying tumbling classes and playdates and evenings with Mommy's friends. And we've all survived the inevitable meltdowns of a 3-year-old who is upset when tumbling class is over or the play-doh has to be put away or Mommy's friend gets in a different car and doesn't come home with us after a lunch date at Culver's.

Sam enjoys wrestling with Tara's fiancee Robb

Every morning before the children wake up, I look out the window and try to prepare for what the weather will bring today. Will Sam need his winter coat and his snowpants? Will Eva need her brown fuzzy snowsuit? Will Sam's boots end up slapped into puddles and soaked or will they slip and slide along the ice patches in the driveway? Last week we turned a corner in town and did a slow 360 in the car ("Mommy, look, it's like hockey!") but by the end of the day Sam's boots and pants were soaked to his knees from playing in puddles. With all the ups and downs and turmoil and transition, I look out the window every morning and try to prepare my children for the day... one day at a time.

See more pictures of Brooklynn's visit here.

Sam helps paint the bathroom

Blowing out the candles on the birthday cupcakes
Sam and TT made while I was in Iowa visiting a friend

A Blip on a Radar Screen

Last week I ventured out for our first social function as a family of three. I dressed Sam in his Packer jersey and wrapped Eva in yellow and green. I changed my own clothes a dozen times trying to find something that would make me hate my post-pregnancy body less. I filled the diaper bag with Size-One Pampers and a thick stack of wipes and a bottle of breastmilk and a change of clothes for both children and the camera with a fully charged battery. I always charge the battery before Sam and Lucy get together.

“I love her, mommy. She is my best friend,” Sam had told me the night before as we wrapped her birthday present and made her card.

When we got into the car to head to the party I wasn’t even thinking about Sam’s peanut allergy. I was taking deep breaths and trying to remind myself that it was going to be okay, that I could handle two children out in the world, that if Kate Gosselin can manage eight, I can certainly manage two…especially when one of them can’t walk.

We climbed the steps of the lodge that Lucy’s parents had rented for the party. Sammy held on to the railing with one hand and carried Lucy’s present with the other. (“Can I help her open it, Mommy?”) I carried Eva and the diaper bag. We entered a party filled with soft lighting and pink lollipops and strawberry frosting and toddlers running in every direction. Lucy greeted us as only Lucy can –sure and confident and approachable –and Sam’s fist immediately gripped the material of my pantsleg. He gave her the present and we hung our coats on the back of a chair.

Eva slept contentedly in the car seat bucket under the pink blanket I’d gotten from the hospital and I tried to encourage Sam to go run with the other kids. I pointed out Gedion and Arie and Quinn, all racing in circles. Sam leaned his head against my leg and said nothing. I told him I was going to catch him, and we chased each other for a while until he was comfortable going off on his own, hiding with the other kids behind the stacks of folding chairs leaned against one wall. I sat near Eva and wondered how anyone could sleep with all the noise. And when Sam sat down to drink pink lemonade out of the can and eat Nerds and Smarties out of the box, I wasn’t thinking about the half-dollar-sized welt a tiny piece of peanut protein had raised on his back six months earlier and the way the doctor had said “Imagine that happening to his throat.” I was listening to Lucy explain that Arie was from the neighborhood and Nora was from Wednesday night Daddy and Me and that girl over there was from Montessori.

And this is where everything becomes a blur for me. I know lollipop centerpieces stood in the middle of every table, and lollipop cookies on sticks were laid out near the kitchen, and in the corner was a gorgeous cake with delicious strawberry frosting. And there were shiny white plates with silver piping around the edges. And the entire room smelled of warm spices and fresh baked bread. But that’s all I really remember in detail after that.

 “Hey, Sammy. Go get some treats,” Gedion’s dad said. “Did you see the chocolate covered peanuts?”

 And some kind of anxiety that I have never experienced before shot through me. “Peanuts? There are peanuts here?” I said. “Sammy can’t have peanuts.”

“Oh that’s right,” Gedion’s mom said.

This is the point in the story where I should have stopped and thought to myself, “Okay, find the peanuts and see if we can put them away.”

But I didn’t.

Instead my postpartum hormones took over and I rushed around the room and pushed the peanuts back from the edge of the table and sighed and sweated and hoped that none of the twenty sprinting toddlers would be eating them or carrying them or rubbing them on Sam’s skin. Instead I hovered near Sam all night and thought of his cousin who had gone to the hospital after a peanut reaction…from a kiss. Instead my heart raced and sweat ran down my chest and I had to take off my gray and green Packer sweatshirt. Instead I sat in a chair by the door and felt the enormity of my life fold in on me.

I wanted to leave. I wanted to go home and pull myself into a cocoon and protect my son from peanuts, protect myself from chaos, protect myself from life. But I didn’t.

Here’s the thing I did do right: I stayed. I let my son climb on the metal chairs and roll the balls on the pool table and spin the rods on the fuseball table. I let him eat too much sugar and drink too much pop and lick too much frosting off cake he didn’t really want. I let Sammy be a kid.

The next day at work I talked to a friend whose 11-year-old son has lived with allergies since he was a baby. When Sam was first diagnosed she had given me books and links and advice on Epi-pens and which kind of Benadryl to keep in my purse. She had talked to me about medicalert bracelets and immunotherapy. She had warned me about Dairy Queen and Chinese food and ice cream processed in facilities that process peanuts. The day after Lucy’s party I asked Laura how to handle such a situation, how she deals with it, what she would have done.

“What you have to realize, Barb,” she said, “is that even though Sam’s peanut allergy is very real and very scary to you, it is not even a blip on the radar screen to other people.” She told me to think of all that I had to do to get ready for Sam’s party last month, to think of all the things I had to remember and manage. She reminded me that other people are in the same place dealing with their families, raising their own children, doing the best job they can.

Lucy’s parents love Sammy and they would never do anything to harm him. And he is so much more than a blip on a radar screen to them. They are bend-over-backwards kind and generous to both Sammy and me. They are bend-over-backwards generous to everyone. And they had made sure all the other food they served, including the cake, was peanut-free. But our first outing as a family of three reminded me that I, alone, am fully responsible for my son; I, alone, need to pay attention. I wasn’t prepared for how out of control life could feel when there are two children and one mommy and a body full of post-partum hormones, but with the first adventure out of the way and many lessons learned, I think we’re going to be just fine.

(This story originally appeared on thenextfamily.com)